Placebo Effect
by rushmore
Summary: In which Will Darcy falls in love with Lizzie Bennet, and she doesn't, because she met Charlie Bingley first, and he'd helped with her bags.


They met in a crowded room where the light was too dim.

"Hi," he said, crushing her hand in his. The lining on his suit scratched his neck. She was wearing something blue, and she was looking away.

"Who are you, again?"

He let go of her hand. "Darcy." A cough. "Will Darcy."

"Oh." She paused and traced the rim of the wine glass, staining her finger. "Charlie's friend."

They both looked over at the man in question. Charlie was surrounded by a cluster of people who were all eagerly listening to his story about Zimbabwe or Morocco or some place equally exotic: Charlie's apartment was filled with masks and blankets and musical instruments from all the places he had travelled to. The party was a home coming, of sorts.

"So." Will turned back to her, but she was walking away, a blur of blue silk, slipping through his fingers.

* * *

Earlier, before the party and before the blur of blue that was Elizabeth Bennet, Charlie had gotten off his plane and wandered through baggage claim, stumbling into people and apologizing profusely for his carelessness. The guitar strapped to his back had hit someone in the head, and he turned around and saw Jane Bennet standing before him, a bruise forming on her head, and he swallowed once and then twice before saying, "That must have hurt," and she replied, "You seem like just the type," and he'd bought her a cold compress, utterly enchanted.

* * *

Will doesn't like Jane. He thinks that she's too much of _something, _a distantly familiar quality that he just can't remember the name for, but knows what it feels like. Jane is the fire in the middle of a storm, slow burning and always there, right in the middle of something more dangerous, more glorious.

When Will tells Charlie this, Charlie looks down at his hands and tells Will to get more sleep.

* * *

Charlie had to go to baggage claim, so Jane collected her cold compress and they walked there together. He found out that Jane was studying to be a doctor; he confessed that he'd always hated the smell of blood.

Jane laughed. "Hey, do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Do your worst."

"I was supposed to meet my sister here," she said, smiling softly, "but then I met you. Is it okay if-"

Charlie waited for all of two seconds before replying, "You need a ride?"

Relief flooded her face. "Truth? Her car got towed last week and it's my turn to pay for the cab with money that I _don't have_."

"Ah, the life of a graduate student," he sighed. They'd reached baggage claim, and he watched as suitcases circled and circled the silver screen until his blue bag appeared in the sea of black. If his sister were here, she would roll her eyes at his willful fight against mass culture ("_Really, _Charlie") but Caroline was off in London, or Paris, maybe Milan- definitively _one _of those cities.

Jane was scanning the crowd, her brow furrowed, as she looked for her sister.

"Her name is Lizzie," she told him, as if knowing her name would help him find her.

Charlie pulled his bag off the carousal and was just starting to fiddle with his watch when he heard a shriek and the sound of heels hitting the floor. He turned to his left and saw a blur running towards Jane, shouting, screaming, smiling.

He guessed that this was Lizzie.

The girl hugged Jane and whispered something in her ear, making her burst out laughing, and the girl grinned, lifted the sunglasses off her eyes, and looked up at Charlie.

"I'm Lizzie," she said.

"Charlie," he said, and reached down to help her with her bags.

* * *

Will doesn't know how one girl can say all of seven words to him and suddenly every other girl he's ever met is dead. Suddenly every other girl isn't enough; suddenly every other girl just isn't her.

It's a bit ridiculous, especially for a man who used to pride himself on his rational approach to dating. If the girl was smart, pretty, and not too fucked up, he would date her. He wasn't searching for perfection or love or anything, just someone he could see occasionally and have some connection with. Sex was a part of the equation, but Will didn't think that made him a bad guy. Everyone wanted sex.

And then he met _her_, and she was the girl of his dreams and the kind of girl that people wrote songs about and they had already had a meet-cute and maybe sometimes all the time Will thought about what their life was going to be like, two boys and one girl and a house with a cupola and Will's therapist had once told him that he was always running towards something new because the present was too painful to stay stuck in, but what it really came down to was that the present was so boring, and Will didn't want to waste his life being bored.

* * *

"So," Charlie started to say something in the car, but Jane, sitting up in front with him, was smiling at him and he forgot what he was going to say.

He could feel Lizzie's smirk on the back of his neck. He tried again.

"So, Lizzie. Where were you coming from?"

"London."

_London. __**That's **_where Caroline was staying.

He changed lanes on the highway. "My sister is staying there, maybe you ran into her?"

"What does she look like?" Lizzie laughed, and Jane laughed, too.

"Take the worst WASP you can think of and multiply that by one hundred," he told them. Beside him, Jane frowned.

"Charlie, I'm sure she's not that bad."

"Jane, he hit you with a guitar. I think anything goes with this family."

Charlie looked up, surprised, and then he burst out laughing, looking at Lizzie in the rearview mirror.

She grinned back, and slid her sunglasses over her eyes.

* * *

Will's parents had divorced when he was fifteen, and he'd never forgiven them, because Gia had only been eight, and being fifteen should never have to include taking care of an eight year old girl, particularly one like Gia.

Gia was constantly exploding on people and imploding on herself and Will was always caught in the crossfire between the outside world and her world. It wasn't so much that she was shy, but she didn't trust people easily (hel_lo_, child of divorce) and everyone mistook that. With the exception of Charlie, his friends were always referring to her as "sweet" and "cute." Caroline, Charlie's sister, even patted her on the head once.

This had happened only a couple months ago, when Gia was seventeen, and the incident had not endeared Caroline Bingley to anyone. Her favorite hobbies seemed to be Will, Will, and a little bit more of Will: he was pretty sure that she also engaged in some light stalking on the side. It was a miracle that she managed to hold down a job at Elle, as being in love with Will seemed to take away a lot of her time. Sometimes Will envisioned scenarios where she was shipped off to investigate the life of a Brazilian bikini waxer and never came back to New York.

Sometimes Will thinks that his therapist might be right when she says that he has an overactive imagination. Sometimes Will thinks his head is just on warp speed, and everyone else's is too slow.

* * *

Charlie got stuck in traffic, and Jane reached over to turn on the radio to 101.9, all the hits and none of the shit.

"Jesus, Jane," Lizzie snapped from the back seat, the sunglasses now perched atop her head, "You do realize that they play the same songs on a loop?"

"Lady Gaga is brilliant," Jane informed Charlie, ignoring Lizzie. "People don't understand talent these days."

"I think they understand talent, Jane, but you don't."

Charlie wanted to laugh, but instead he said, "I'm not really a Gaga guy."

Lizzie leaned forward and reached through the armrest to hit him on his arm. "Dude! My hero."

"What music you do like?" Jane asked. From anyone else, it would have sounded passive aggressive and whiney, but Jane managed to make it sound curious and charming. Jane managed to do a lot of things that other people couldn't get away with, like being hit by a guy with a guitar in an airport who wasn't an asshole, pervert, or moron.

Some people have all the luck.

Charlie scratched the back of his arm and thought about it. "Definitively some Stones…punk, definitively, the Ramones were such an influence for my teenage angst, all five years of it, uh, a lot of newer bands, Passion Pit, the XX, and Bono is always good for inspirational shower songs."

Huh. That all sounded better in his head, more impressive, less hipsterish, more iconoclastic.

"You're so _cool,_" Lizzie said, all sarcasm, and she leaned over the car console to put in a CD. She fiddled with the controls, and Charlie was prepared for a blast of underground techno or something really _cool _when he heard Bono singing over those slow cords, _And so she woke up, woke up from where she was lying still, said I gotta do something about where we're going._

"I _love _Bono," Lizzie murmured, her arm still resting on the console between Charlie and Jane. Charlie scratched his arm again and turned up the volume.

He loved this song.

* * *

Will didn't want to brag, but he was a smart guy, graduated top in his class at Harvard, did all the usual internships, got a couple big raises, and now he was working at the New Yorker. Not too bad for a twenty-five year old.

Charlie worked at National Geographic, searching the world for one glorious picture and unknown wonders, for waterfalls that looked like heaven and for light hitting eyes in the right moment. His apartment was full of his pictures, all black and white and all of people, staring right into the camera, their eyes full of something. Will wanted to know what the pictures meant, if they meant anything at all, and Charlie rolled his eyes and said, "Will, you're such a _literal _man," which was a really bad joke, in Will's opinion.

* * *

They had listened to Bono sing his heart out about the Joshua Tree and the traffic still hadn't gotten better. Charlie was beginning to suspect that someone above had it in for him. He was trapped in his car with the Bennet sisters, and was quickly learning that Lizzie was a bomb, ticking away in the comfort of his back seat.

Jane still smiled at him, and he still didn't know what to say when she did _that _smile, the slow, head tilt, stare into your soul smile that made him stop thinking. With Lizzie, he was _always _thinking, always wondering if she would make fun of him or let him in. She was constantly fiddling with things in his car, fixing the headrests and turning up the volume or turning it down or putting on her sunglasses or taking them off and when she stretched her arms for what felt like the millionth time and hit the back of his neck _again, _he couldn't take it anymore.

"Jesus, Bennet, stay still," he said, and instantly regretted it. He had known these girls for five hours, _five fucking hours_, and already he was slipping into being friends with them. He needed to work on his trust sensor.

Jane tried to appease him. "She's had a really long flight."

"So have I." Great. And now he's the jerk.

He expected Lizzie to go on a rant about how guys just suck and the world needs better drivers (that particular soliloquy had happened about a ½ mile ago) but instead she apologized. "I couldn't sleep that much on the plane."

"Didn't you pull the shades down?"

"I would have, but I wasn't that concerned with it, to be honest."

Charlie didn't understand her. If she wanted to sleep, she should have pulled down the shades. Cause and effect. "Why weren't you?"

"Look, you-"

"We had a death in the family. Lizzie was coming back from the funeral, in London," Jane said quietly. He reached over to Jane's shoulder and held it, and she smiled back at him, mouthed "Thanks," and turned up the volume on the CD.

Behind him, he saw Lizzie take off the sunglasses, and that's when he saw the tired look in her eyes and the tears in her eyes. She caught him looking at her, and she set her jaw and stared at him, as if daring him to say something, and he almost didn't, but then he said, "I was in Africa looking at elephant shit, and I stepped in some when I was trying to take a picture."

Lizzie started laughing, and Charlie glanced away when the tears dropped out of her eyes and fell onto her sunglasses.

* * *

Gia had once told Will that he fell in love with the idea of love but not really the girls he claimed to be in love with. Will had told her that she didn't know the meaning of love, and she'd told him to go stick an airplane shaft up his ass, so that conversation wasn't a reflection of the Darcy's at their best, and was therefore disqualified from Will's collection of Deep and Important, Possibly Life-Altering Conversations, of which there were many: that one late-night burrito guy who had told him that being happy meant salsa on a piece of pineapple, the time that Charlie's mom had died and Charlie had sat in his room without talking for a whole day, which wasn't really a conversation but was definitively Deep and Important, and the time that Will's parents told him that they were divorcing, and, now, the time that he met Lizzie Bennet and she didn't know who he was.

Will leads a very interesting life.

* * *

So they've finally reached the exit of the highway, only Charlie doesn't know why he's the one driving, because his thoughts are suddenly racing around his head and he doesn't have the space to think about brakes and speed limits and being safe.

Because five hours ago, he'd gotten off a plane and he'd had no idea that Jane Bennet or Elizabeth Bennet existed at all. If his guitar hadn't hit Jane, he almost definitively would not have met her. She would not be sitting in his car, and her sister would not be silently crying in the backseat.

Because four and a half hours ago, Jane Bennet had stopped his thoughts and left him with a stupid smile on his face. Because four and a half hours ago, he'd bought her a cold compress, utterly enchanted, and because he had been trying to find out how to ask her out without seeming overly eager.

Because four hours ago, he'd helped Elizabeth Bennet with her bags.

Because three and a half hours ago, he had found out that Lizzie liked Bono, liked the song about running and standing and suffering a needle chill, liked being a nuisance, liked placing her arm next to his.

Because three hours ago, he had been a jerk and she had laughed so hard that the tears fell on her sunglasses, the sunglasses that she had been fiddling with and the sunglasses that now seemed to be a lot more than just a pair of tortoise shell sunglasses.

Because two hours ago, Jane had fallen asleep, and Lizzie had started singing along with Bono, and because Charlie had joined in, and they had sung quietly for fifty miles, through streets with no names and back to running again, back to standing still.

Because one hour ago, Lizzie had fallen asleep, and then he'd been the only one awake, driving in silence, going around and around on an asphalt loop that was supposed to bring people home, and the idea of home always made him think too much.

* * *

Will sometimes wondered what his life would be like if he hadn't grown up so scared of losing things. When he was nineteen, he was terrified that he would lose his watch, and he'd walked everywhere with one hand clamped on the other, holding onto the watch. It was a silly thing to be scared of, but Will couldn't understand how it was any different from being scared of heights or airplanes; in fact, compared to some people's fears, it was perfectly reasonable and almost justifiable, unlike Charlie's fear of clowns, which was just stupid.

In his therapy session on Tuesday, his therapist had told him that the watch probably symbolized his family, and he'd told her that she really needed to improve her sense of humor.

She wasn't joking, and neither was he.

* * *

Charlie dropped the Bennet sisters off at their apartment. Jane thanked him profusely, and he got her number. Lizzie just looked at him, fiddled with her sunglasses, and pulled him into a hug.

"Thanks," she said against his shirt collar.

"Sure, stranger," he said, closing his eyes.

She pulled out of the hug and gave him a one-arm salute.

On the drive back to his apartment, he realized that she'd stuffed something in his pocket, a piece of paper with the words _hey Bono's second coming, don't break Jane's heart _written in blue ink.

* * *

Will met her at the party that Charlie threw the day after he came home.

Charlie never told him about how he met her.

It would have complicated things.

* * *

Author's Note:

So I've been reading Pride and Prejudice again and I started to think about the possibility of Lizzie and Charlie...and got more and more intrigued by it. Because modern!Charlie Bingley is my favorite thing ever. And I always think of Chris Tomson, the drummer from Vampire Weekend, when I think of modern!Charlie. And I've decided that I just ship Bingley with everyone.

Lizzie and Charlie sing "Running to Stand Still." It's beautiful. You should listen to it.

Hipster music and Bono are two of my favorite things, and my third favorite thing? Reviews! Of course!


End file.
